Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — Israel’s military has been testing new ways to enhance
its missile alert network.

Officials said the military’s Home Front Command has been working to
refine a method to use standard cellular phone communications to warn
Israelis of an impending missile strike. They said the command conducted a
test of its new SMS alert system on Jan. 1.

“The system will provide warnings in real time according to location,”
the military said.

The test was conducted amid criticism of civil defense exercises over
the last 18 months. Officials said the exercises pointed to a major gap in interoperability between military and civilian authorities.

During the Jan. 1 exercise, the military tested the SMS network for the
Tel Aviv area. Officials said messages were sent to an unspecified number of
Israelis in Arabic, English, Hebrew and Russian.

This marked the second test of the SMS alert system. The first test took
place in 2011 during the Turning Point-5 exercise, which sought to simulate
an Israeli response to a missile attack from Lebanon and Syria.

On Jan. 3, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the military has
reached agreement for the halt in operations at the nuclear reactors of
Dimona and Nahal Sorek in the event of military attack.

The military and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission were said to have arranged for operations at the two reactors to
be shut down during any regional war, expected to include massive missile and rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

  2012: New civil defense system alerts cell phones to incoming missiles, Dimona, Home Front Command, Israel, Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, Nahal Sorek, SMS alert system, Tel Aviv, Turning Point-5